Ballpoint Pen-Guins

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Brianna M.
How many species of animals are you aware of? Here's one not many know about.Ballpoint pen-guins. They live mainly in Arctic regions. They squirt ink mainly as a defense mechanism. Most people think oil spills caused the enormous amounts of black clouds in the water, but these pen-guins also contribute to the vast black oceans. When people find penguin predators covered in a gooey, oily ink they assume they survived an oil spill, but in truth they might have escaped the wrath of the ballpoint pen-guin. Of the 19 species, ballpoint pen-guins are truly the most ferocious and deadly.

Health and Hunting.


  • Pen-guins are enemies with the leopard seal, skua gull, killer whale sea lions, orcas, snakes, sharks and foxes
  • . They tends to eat what ever they find which,commonly, consists of fish, squid, and shrimp. They are carnivores.
  • While hunting they will often try to stab or spear prey with the tip of their beak/pen-tip. If their prey becomes too much for them to handle they may squirt ink into its eyes and escape. In dire situations where food is scarce they will consume part of the prey that is not poisoned with the ink. Studies have shown that only 1/8 animals survive this deadly ink.
  • Pen-guins can be endangered by oil spills, water pollution, and people poaching them for their valuable ink.
  • The way pen-guins work is they have an extra organ called the inkaclumous that stores ink until usage. This organ can hold around 1.5 L of ink to be used throughout their lives. During their lives they tap into their precious ink storage around 15 times.
  • It is not unusual to have more or less ink and if they don't have any ink but do have an ink-tip-beak this is caused by a genetic mess up; if both of the parents were born with less than the usual ink amount, which itself is normal in most circumstances, they can be born with no ink or a drastically small amount of ink, .3 L is the smallest amount ever found inside a newborn pen-guins inkaclumous.
  • A pen-guin can live 15-20 years. During that time, they spend up to 75 percent of their lives at sea.For some pen-guins that are born with a defect ,they usually live around 8-16 years.


Affects and Studies.


  • Sometimes pen-guins accidentally release ink into the ocean. This can mix in or actually become what people believe to be oil spills. Birds die from oil spills if their feathers are covered in oil. A large part of the oil is actually ink from the pen-guins that defend themselves near water sources.The bird will then be poisoned by the ink and oil because it will try to clean itself. Oil and ink may also cause the death of an animal by entering the animal’s lungs or liver. The animal will then be poisoned by the substances. The oil and ink mixture can also kill an animal by blinding it. The animal will not be able to see and be aware of their predators. If they are not aware of other animals, they may be eaten or attacked, thus being injured
  • Many people have tried to put pen-guins in captivity, but they are too violent. The people who've managed to capture one and put it into a secure environment where they could study it found that they aren't safe to even be viewed or heard of by the public as they would try to hunt them.
  • Though the people who know about pen-guins(people who found out on their own as people who've studied them are smart and know how dangerous they are and don't hunt them) and hunt them usually end up confused in a hospital, covered in ink if not dead.

Under-reproduction and Endangerment.

  • Since pen-guins are such a rare species and many people poach the they have advanced to the top of a very specific and precise endangerment list for special animals. Due to the small life span of most pen-guins they have become threatened.
  • Being endangered and having small numbers causes under-reproduction which, and already having small numbers, is caused by the rareness of pen-guins in the first place.
  • Being rare, a pen-guin can find a mate only so often. (Reproduction of pen-guins is exactly the same as a regular penguin reproduction.)
  • Ballpoint Pen-Guin in Zoo- click this link to see footage of a ballpoint penguin accidentally put in captivity. The person who shot this footage was an innocent zoo goer and didn't realize what they had just witnessed was a furious pen-guin that may not harm other regular penguins but may harm a zookeeper. Below is a list of videos where the situation is similar.
  • Ballpoint Pen-Guins- in this instance the pen-guin had escaped it's habitat and probably attacked that man; he was aware of the pen-guin specimen and wanted the people to leave immediately as to not b harmed.

Citations